Stirred
by Quentanilien
Summary: Inspired by the conversation between Robin and Marian in the cave in Season 1 Episode 12.


The orange flames of the torch crackled brightly, but the searing fire in Marian's side was only just beginning to subside. Djaq was a skilled healer, but the blunt needle had been worse than the stab of Guy's blade. At least that cut had been swift, over before she even knew what had happened. The needle was slow, agonizing, wrenching her apart while stitching her together. It had been all she could do to keep from fainting at the pain. Her pride was all that had kept her from it. She was the Nightwatchman, and Robin and Djaq were watching, and she would show her courage.

She rested her head back, listening to the comforting scratch of metal against wood as Robin sharpened his arrows. For a second, she thought she saw the boy he once was, and she smiled fondly at the memory.

He looked up at her. "Well," he sighed. "The bad news…is you've been stabbed. But the good news is you don't have to marry the man that stabbed you."

Marian smiled back at him, but it was no longer a genuine smile. This news of the physician…it was too much to hope for. And then, there were the consequences. "What will happen?"

"When the king comes to Nottingham, I'll make an entrance. He will let me speak; he trusts me. I will present the evidence, the physician will corroborate it, and…and Gisborne will be done for." At least one of them was confident. He made it sound so effortless, so easy, as with everything else he did. Spring a man from prison, save a man from the noose, feed starving villagers, save the king's life, save Marian's future. All in a day's work for Robin Hood.

It could not—it would not—be so simple. And those words, _done for_, they disturbed her. She had to ask.

"Will he hang?"

Robin's affirmative was quick, sure. This disturbed her even more. A sudden vision leapt into her mind: Guy standing at the gallows, the rope looped tightly about his neck, waiting for the world to fall out from beneath him. Waiting for everything to end. He was not hooded. No…his eyes bored into hers with a frightening intensity. They were not cold, arrogant, as they usually were. She had expected that. No, this was sorrow, urging—not begging, never begging—her to save him.

Marian blinked the vision away. Her eyes were slightly damp.

And Robin was speaking again, appealing to her sense of reason. "Marian, this is a man who would force you to marry him. A man who tried to kill the king, a man who stabbed _you_!"

She met Robin's warm blue eyes once more and said firmly, "Even so, I will never support hanging."

And something in his face changed, and he looked pained, confused, as though he had lost something. As though he was holding himself back from telling her what that something was. She knew that expression all too well from when they were children.

"What?"

He refused to answer. She would not be dismissed.

And he gave in. The very act seemed to hurt him. She could almost see the blunt needle poking away at some unnamed emotion inside of him.

"I think you feel for him."

She blinked, startled, and fumbled a little for words, settling quickly on the most general argument she could open with. And it was the truth.

"He's a human being."

"Hardly." He paused for a moment, then suddenly everything hidden came tumbling out. "You _are_ stirred by him." His tone was accusing.

"Stirred?" Marian could only laugh softly at the choice of words.

Robin was insistent. "He said it."

Her laughter had jarred her wound, causing the constant ache to throb suddenly, and she felt Guy's dagger under her skin once more. She expected to feel bitter towards him, fiercely angry for causing her such suffering, but she found she could not. She could not even hate him. Not for that. She had been the Nightwatchman, and she had been stealing what he felt were his own possessions. She had even kicked him down the stairs, leaving him in a very mortifying heap at the bottom. She knew Guy to be just as capable of malicious retaliation as the result of injuries to his pride as injuries to his wealth. This wound was a lesson, a lesson in her own pride and carelessness, and a lesson that she would not soon forget.

_Stirred_? She pictured the word escaping from his mouth, the sneering, exultant way he would have spoken it, the way his lips formed around it. And yet, there was something else…the vulnerability behind it that only she could see. He wished it to be so, and he spoke it, perhaps secretly hoping that utterance would make it exist.

_Stirred._ Did he not see how she always pulled away, how his very presence lent her the stiffness and frigidity of an icicle? Her touch may burn him, but his touch froze her. In his presence, she stood on the edge of a cliff, always walking the delicate line of the brink, hovering between safety and the sudden plunge to her doom. When he wrapped his arms around her, when he tried to draw her closer, all she could feel was the blood on his hands. All she could see was his blind obedience to the Sheriff. All she could hear were the screams of those he had killed. They formed a grotesque litany in her head, parading through over and over until he would finally draw back, releasing her from his agonizing touch. And that—that was the worst part. For it was then that the litany cracked, revealing what was behind it, and that was how he frightened her most of all. It was then, in the space between them, that she felt everything she desperately struggled not to feel. The rough touch of his fingers on hers. His breath on her cheek. His arms encircling her possessively. His rough, low voice in her ear. The icy burn of his gaze. The perilous proximity of his lips. Perilous because she should hate him and she doesn't. Perilous because the only thing that protects her from them is the wall of his sins that she has erected between them. But the wall is old, crumbling as fast as she struggles to rebuild it. And he calls to her—always—from the other side. And even as his crimes multiply, she finds it harder and harder to resist that call.

For one startling moment, she saw her vision of Guy at the gallows once more, and his eyes looked ancient with grief. But the rope was gone. He now held a dagger to his own throat, and his eyes called out for her to save him. She felt herself rushing forward, desperate to stop him, desperate to claim his life as her own, desperate to make it worth something. Her fingers wrapped around the dagger, and it cut into them, but she did not care, for they were the only barrier between Guy and his doom. Her blood dripped down his chest, and he closed his eyes, savoring the sweet redemption, and their lips met and she had saved him and the ice melted away and Marian _burned_ with the same intensity Guy always had, always would, only for her.

Then suddenly it was gone and Marian was in the cave with Robin. The pain was still in her stomach and the hollow dripping of the rain left a chill in her body.

_Stirred_. She was still smiling at the word, first spoken only seconds before, but it was not a real smile. She could no longer lie to herself, and she could no longer lie to Robin. Yet she could no longer speak the truth, either.

And then he was asking the unavoidable question.

"And he was right, wasn't he?"

And Marian said the only thing she could.

"Grow up."


End file.
